Summary:
According to Curtis White, the inevitable passage of our existing book culture and its accompanying institutions is nowhere near as important as the fact that authors have abandoned any sense of their role as outsiders--destructive forces with the power to bring about change. After all, far too often literary institutions have stabilized the beautifully subversive truths of unruly, antagonistic works through canonization. In addition, whereas "true" artistic power demonstrated indifference to what critics and canonizers think, while today's writing community has become "almost sick with desire for... ephemeral grace."
Thus, the genuine tragedy worth bemoaning today is that artists have become happy servomechanisms - "dissolved, digitized, and totalized" by their mindless embrace of inhumanly powerful gadgets. This loss of outsider status also forsakes the fierce aesthetic controversies that have fueled great work. Finally, whereas great art confronted us with our own emptiness, the web is a constant, chattering distraction from such psychological wrestling matches of the mind.
Curtis doesn't call for a Luddite rebellion, but refuses to "give aid and comfort to [his] jailer by saying that a prison house is a pleasure dome."
Commentary:
White begins "The Latest Word" by referencing another article he'd written: "The Late Word." In responding to that previous piece, White seems to be establishing a type of authorial privilege and intent to discuss the literary that, in his mind, is destroyed by the "Great Library of Amazon, a super-sized Babel made all of 'content units'" ("The Late Word"). What's interesting is that White ensures himself at least an opportunity to talk about the purpose of "literary institutions" (2) by responding to his own essay; his on-going conversation about the nature of institutions, literature, and rote adaptation of technology gives us an example of how we too should grapple grapple with the necessarily "subversive" nature of language and literature in the age of Amazon (even if we think of ourselves as luddites). As White asks "can this deference to the dignity of being happen in the context of a Web dominated by corporations whose job is basically to create rigid market identities so it can better sell them" (3), he manages to pose an important question and paradox: can we, for example, be outside Amazon's rigid structuring of identities for sales and yet manage to still sell subversive, beautiful works within that structure?
One important word mentioned in the piece is the "Salon" (3) -- as the French middle-class began to rise, the Salon became the place where people gathered to discuss cultural creations of all sorts. That mention is rather brilliant since it gives us a name for what Amazon has systematized: a "desir[e] to define the dominant tendency of the moment which in turn would determine the world of the future, on the outside" (4). When he admits that "even this essay succumbs to that implacable dynamic, God help me" (4), his honesty and candor about modernity's Prufrock-tinged anxiety at least allows us a chance to confront the abyss of existence, even if we have to order next term's textbooks after class.
Question:
1. To what extent do you agree with White's presumption that literary institutions have abandoned their role as dangerous outsiders? (Consider Percy Shelley's plea to publisher re: Queen Mab: “If you do not dread the arm of the law, or any exasperation of public opinion against yourself, I wish that it should be printed and published immediately.” qtd. in White's original article.) Are any contemporary voices brave enough to warrant such concerns?
2. Honesty time - did you find elements of this piece hyperbolic? Consider your reaction as well: how do you either step outside digital comforts to reflect on your purpose or calm yourself long enough to consider how you can enact change within it?
Summary:
According to Curtis White, the inevitable passage of our existing book culture and its accompanying institutions is nowhere near as important as the fact that authors have abandoned any sense of their role as outsiders--destructive forces with the power to bring about change. After all, far too often literary institutions have stabilized the beautifully subversive truths of unruly, antagonistic works through canonization. In addition, whereas "true" artistic power demonstrated indifference to what critics and canonizers think, while today's writing community has become "almost sick with desire for... ephemeral grace."
Thus, the genuine tragedy worth bemoaning today is that artists have become happy servomechanisms - "dissolved, digitized, and totalized" by their mindless embrace of inhumanly powerful gadgets. This loss of outsider status also forsakes the fierce aesthetic controversies that have fueled great work. Finally, whereas great art confronted us with our own emptiness, the web is a constant, chattering distraction from such psychological wrestling matches of the mind.
Curtis doesn't call for a Luddite rebellion, but refuses to "give aid and comfort to [his] jailer by saying that a prison house is a pleasure dome."
Commentary:
White begins "The Latest Word" by referencing another article he'd written: "The Late Word." In responding to that previous piece, White seems to be establishing a type of authorial privilege and intent to discuss the literary that, in his mind, is destroyed by the "Great Library of Amazon, a super-sized Babel made all of 'content units'" ("The Late Word"). What's interesting is that White ensures himself at least an opportunity to talk about the purpose of "literary institutions" (2) by responding to his own essay; his on-going conversation about the nature of institutions, literature, and rote adaptation of technology gives us an example of how we too should grapple grapple with the necessarily "subversive" nature of language and literature in the age of Amazon (even if we think of ourselves as luddites). As White asks "can this deference to the dignity of being happen in the context of a Web dominated by corporations whose job is basically to create rigid market identities so it can better sell them" (3), he manages to pose an important question and paradox: can we, for example, be outside Amazon's rigid structuring of identities for sales and yet manage to still sell subversive, beautiful works within that structure?
One important word mentioned in the piece is the "Salon" (3) -- as the French middle-class began to rise, the Salon became the place where people gathered to discuss cultural creations of all sorts. That mention is rather brilliant since it gives us a name for what Amazon has systematized: a "desir[e] to define the dominant tendency of the moment which in turn would determine the world of the future, on the outside" (4). When he admits that "even this essay succumbs to that implacable dynamic, God help me" (4), his honesty and candor about modernity's Prufrock-tinged anxiety at least allows us a chance to confront the abyss of existence, even if we have to order next term's textbooks after class.
Question:
1. To what extent do you agree with White's presumption that literary institutions have abandoned their role as dangerous outsiders? (Consider Percy Shelley's plea to publisher re: Queen Mab: “If you do not dread the arm of the law, or any exasperation of public opinion against yourself, I wish that it should be printed and published immediately.” qtd. in White's original article.) Are any contemporary voices brave enough to warrant such concerns?
2. Honesty time - did you find elements of this piece hyperbolic? Consider your reaction as well: how do you either step outside digital comforts to reflect on your purpose or calm yourself long enough to consider how you can enact change within it?